This invention relates to a light emitting device for illuminating the body, including illuminating a portion thereof. Examples of such devices include a tanning bed, tanning canopy, tanning booth, or face tanner. In particular, the invention relates to an arrangement of lamps that increases the total number of tubular lamps in an array in a body illuminating device while preserving the ability to grasp the lamps during removal or installation.
Arrangements of tubular ultraviolet fluorescent lamps have been used for, among other things, tanning beds, tanning booths, face tanners and tanning canopies. The present invention relates to an apparatus having an arrangement of fluorescent lamps, preferably tubular tanning lamps. Maximizing the total number of ultraviolet lamps while maintaining a constant distance from the body, yet preserving the ability to grasp the lamps for removal or installation is commercially desirable. To maximize the number of lamps in a bed, various arrangements of lamps have arisen. U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,139,568 to Doty; 5,683,437 to Doty; 4,703,184 to Wolff; and 4,623,796 to Kratz are cited as background references concerning various lamp arrangement schemes.
In one approach, the lamps in the same row are simply placed closer together. The drawback to this approach is that the minimum separation between the lamps is limited to allow for grasping of the lamps, thereby limiting the minimum lamp separation and thus maximum number of lamps in the bed. Another approach uses two rows of lamps having different distances from the person being illuminated or tanned. The lamps in each row are separated such that the lamps may be grasped for removal or installation with the lamps in the back row being placed behind the gaps between the lamps in the front row. This staggering of the lamps between the rows allows the radiation from the row further away from the tanning person to directly emit radiation onto the tanning person through the gaps between the lamps in the closest row. This configuration increases the total number of tanning lamps in a tanning bed while leaving sufficient space between individual lamps in each row to facilitate grasping the lamps. However, a drawback to this design is that the tanning bed must be bulkier to accommodate two rows of lamps, and the lamps in the more remote row are further away than desired.
A need exists for a lamp arrangement that allows the lamps in the same row to be closely spaced while still allowing grasping of the lamps for individual replacement. The present invention satisfies these needs and provides other important advantages.
The present invention allows lamps in a body illuminating device to be placed closely together while still allowing individual lamps to be grasped. Longitudinally displacing a lamp from the lamp next to it creates a space at the end of the lamp whereby the lamp may be grasped for installing or removing the lamp. Since this offset alleviates the need to grip the lamps near the center, the spacing between the lamps may be decreased to the point where adjacent lamps are almost, or actually, touching. When removing or installing lamps, one end of each lamp may be gripped and rotated to remove or install each lamp.